IGMS Issue 11 Read online

  He put his arm around Gretchen's waist and pulled her to him. It surprised her at first, but she caught the look in his eye and understood. She squeezed him and put her head on his shoulder, still gazing out the window. There was no reasonable way for either of them to verbalize how upset they were that their homes and all of their loved ones were gone. It was an emotional maelstrom that threatened to drown them both, but they took comfort that their feelings were understood, and they also took comfort in knowing that soon it wouldn't matter.

  All three flinched when a metallic bang sounded from the other side of the control module. Gretchen and Trevor knotted their fingers together.

  "Something hit us," said Trevor. The other two were silent. "Should I check it out?"

  "Why bother?" said Nikolai. "Let's just close the cupola's hatch in case the control module depressurizes. I want to enjoy this as long as possible.

  They all agreed and Trevor shut the hatch. When a prolonged shriek indicated that the wreckage of the Destiny Laboratory was being ripped away, they did not flinch. Trevor and Gretchen's embrace, and their unceasing gaze out the window, was unbroken.

  They didn't flinch at the rhythmic hammering that shook the hull of the ship. They didn't flinch when it sounded like titanium struts were being snapped like twigs or when it sounded like spikes were being fired into the side of the control module. However, at the unmistakable sound of the control module's aft hatchway being unlatched and opened, Gretchen's fingernails cut bloody marks into Trevor's hand. Trevor was unaware of the injury. He was aware only of the saturating sense of superstitious terror and awe that had gripped him. The three of them were seized with a hysterical paralysis that was broken only when movement became audible in the control module.

  Trevor untangled himself from Gretchen and moved to the small square window in the hatchway. "There are people in there."

  Trevor saw two, tall figures in tan suits with helmets and visors. The visors were tinted and he couldn't see what lay behind them. "Should I go in?"

  Nikolai shrugged, trying to cope with a feeling that lay somewhere between inebriation and animal panic.

  "Yes," said Gretchen quietly. She was shaking, but still managing to push Trevor in the back. "Go."

  Trevor unlatched the door and pushed it open. The two figures were examining the debris as they floated through the control module. They froze like statues when Trevor opened the door. Their suits looked like plated ceramic and they fit close to the skin. Reaching their hands to the side of their helmets, the dark tinting of their visors turned clear, revealing two faces that were almost as astonished as Trevor's. One of the figures was a woman. She was unusually tall and thin but had fine, unmistakably human features. Her skin was as fair as porcelain and her golf ball-sized eyes had corneas of faded green. The other figure was a man. His skin was also pale and he looked at Trevor with something approaching reverence. "My lord," he said, "you're alive."

  The woman stepped forward and spoke with an accent that was familiar and yet impossible to identify. "You are shuttle commander Trevor Kimberly," she said with the same note of awe that was so obvious in her companion's voice.

  By this time, Gretchen and Nikolai had pulled themselves into the control module too. The woman continued, "Your companions are science officers Gretchen Whey and Nikolai Lokov."

  "Who are you?" asked Gretchen.

  "I am commander Ariana Aitelo," she said. Her last name was one new shock on top of many others, and when she indicated the nameplate over her breast it did indeed read AITELO. "I am a descendant of Hector Aitelo, the copilot of the space shuttle Phoenix." The crew looked at her with feelings of total disorientation.

  "Descendant?" asked Trevor.

  Ariana Aitelo looked at him seriously. "How long has it been for you since the impact of ISBH-147?"

  Nikolai looked at his watch. "About an hour and a half."

  Ariana exchanged a look with her partner before returning her gaze to the crew. "For us, it was 842 years ago."

  With faces pressed to the glass, Gretchen and Trevor looked down on the surface of Mars as the rescue frigate Chaos Utopia decelerated into close orbit around the rusty planet. The voyage that had taken the three-person crew of Space Station Alpha an hour and a half took the Chaos Utopia a slightly lengthier eight days. However, the advantage of the way the Martian ship traveled was that it circumvented the time-distorting effects of relativity so that its crew could return to their families just weeks after they left, rather than a thousand years later.

  Hector Aitelo had indeed survived the crash onto the Martian surface along with systems engineer Myrtle Lenard. When the Phoenix touched its wheels to the rocky Martian soil, it was traveling at over 600 miles per hour. In seconds, the landing gear was sheared off and the shuttle skidded on its belly for over a mile as it disintegrated into a tumbling cloud of debris. The only piece of wreckage of any substantial size was the reinforced cockpit, and from this smoking chamber, Hector and Myrtle emerged alive. The other two crew members of the Phoenix did not survive, but the landing still ranked as one of the legendary events in the colonization of Mars.

  The Russian mission, one of China's two missions and a joint effort between France and Canada had also succeeded in sending crews to Mars giving the planet a total population of 26. For decades, these pioneers struggled on the verge of death by starvation and exposure, but once they adapted to the Martian way of life, there was no stopping them.

  The original settlers soon depressurized to the Martian atmosphere, eliminating the need for pressurized structures and suits (though the reliance on manufactured oxygen was a habit they would never break). Nuclear generators powered machines that harvested CO2 from the air and converted it to methane. Massive drills pulled water from the subterranean ice sheets. Recipes for concrete and glass led to the first dwellings made from native materials. Eventually these dwellings became towns, then cities. Complexes of mammoth greenhouses stretched for miles. The dangers of inbreeding were avoided through in-vitro fertilization of eggs brought from Earth.

  And, of course, with a population descended largely from astronauts and scientists, the cause of space exploration moved rapidly. Less than 200 years after the first settlers arrived, the first microchip was fabricated from Martian minerals. Less than100 years after that, a manned rocket was launched into Martian orbit. This kicked off an age of exploration that reached every corner of the solar system. Six hundred years after the end of Earth, Martian scientists entered the golden age of astrophysics. They found the keys that would unlock the door to the entire galaxy. It was only then that Hector Aitelo's dream of discovering the fate of his crewmates -- an idea passed down for over 700 years -- could be set in motion.

  For the explorers of Mars, it was not rescuing the remains of Space Station Alpha that was difficult, it was finding it. It took over a hundred years to locate the hurtling speck of aluminum and titanium, but once it was found -- 842 years after the first human landed on Mars -- the rescue frigate Chaos Utopia was en route within weeks.

  Gretchen and Trevor watched in awe as the highly populated Cydonian Valley came into view beneath them. The rear section of the frigate was being used as a pressurized quarantine zone. When the Martians entered, they had to wear suits to protect them from the pressures that seemed so natural to the Earthlings. The two astronauts were alone because Nikolai was shut into his private chamber. Upon rescue, the stoicism of the three crewmembers had evaporated and their grief at the loss of everything hit them like a train. Nikolai was inconsolable. He'd managed the loss of his beloved by reassuring himself that he'd shortly be joining her; but now that he was a survivor, the full weight of Ada's death seemed poised to crush him.

  Gretchen and Trevor at least had each other. This caused its own pain -- an additional sense of guilt on top of the guilt of simply living -- but it helped them greatly to take comfort in one another. Also helpful was their sense of complete exhaustion. With her head on Trevor's shoulder, Gretchen said: "I'm t
oo tired to hurt." The emotional agony was so great that sometimes it seemed remote.

  She grabbed his neck and kissed him on the lips. They had not yet become lovers -- would not for quite some time -- but they had the patience of people who knew they eventually would.

  An hour later, after another orbit had allowed the explorers to take in the barren splendor of their future home, the Chaos Utopia was tugged into a screaming glide as the sparse Martian atmosphere began to catch hold on its control surfaces. Safely suited and strapped into their seats, Gretchen, Trevor, and Nikolai held their breath as an expansive runway lifted its hand up to catch them, while the towering spires of the capitol city Cydonia loomed behind it. Then, and only then, did they fully understand that the verdant green planet they'd known all their lives had been dead for the better part of a millennia and that they would be the last beings to ever recall this homeland, not through recordings and museums, but through the uncorrupted recollections of their own misty eyes.

  The Sin Hypothesis

  by E.A. Lustig

  Artwork by Scott Altmann

  * * *

  She had breasts, like a grown woman's, poking up under a smart tweed jacket. A pair of brown pumps on her feet -- the kind I was supposedly too young to wear, and stockings instead of anklets. Mother had called her a poor little orphaned refugee.

  But the girl who arrived on the 4:15 from Mobile looked like no such thing.

  Karin stood erect as a soldier on the deserted platform, her bags in a neat stack beside her. Reverend Harden, who'd fetched her up from Argentina, sat on a bench in the shade sound asleep.

  The train had come early that spring day in 1950.

  Mother rushed toward her, arms wide, smiling like Christmas.

  Karin threw out her hand to be shaken. Mother swooped her arms down, grasped the little hand in the pink kid glove, and stroked it like a baseball. I was pushing Daddy in the wheelchair, so by the time we got close Mother was already telling Karin how happy we all were to have her with us, saying each word like she was picking it off a tree.

  "You do not have to speak slowly Mrs. Milgrim. I am fluent in four languages. My English is quite good I have been told."

  Mother's smile froze. Karin's English was good, but her accent was sharp as cat's teeth.

  The people of LaGrange pronounced her "a lovely girl. And so well mannered!" It probably helped that she rarely spoke. I often heard her talking though -- in the garden, behind the tool shed, late at night whispering in her bed -- practicing words, trying to sound like us. In time, the accent faded. The bite in her tone of voice, however, was as permanent as those big bosoms that had no business on a thirteen-year-old child.

  I was dazzled by her. She called me Elena instead of Ellie. She'd lived all over Europe -- and in New York City for a while before her parents took her to Argentina where they lived in a big house with six servants, including a seamstress who made her dozens of beautiful dresses. Karin said that she needed a large wardrobe because of the many social engagements girls of her class attended.

  "Is that how refugees live in Argentina?" I asked.

  "Refugees! We were most certainly not refugees. My family was not forced to leave Germany. We left our home because it had become a place that was no longer Germany. It was . . . ruined."

  Karin was smart. But in spite of her private schooling, tutors, and all her travels, that girl was pig ignorant when it came to church. And during those first months, Reverend Harden exhibited us at every church in four counties, parading us around like prize livestock.

  Daddy came with us a time or two, but he hated being wheeled down front and introduced as a hero, so he quit. He hadn't objected when Mother decided to take in a war orphan; didn't care one way or the other. After he came home from the war, Daddy had got to where he could take or leave most anything -- except being pitied. He liked Karin as much as he liked anyone.

  Mother, on the other hand, sparkled in church, relished every minute. Not because of the attention, or the praise for being such a splendid example of Christian charity. No, Mama had the true spirit deep in her heart. Being kind and charitable came naturally to her. Trying to truly love Karin was hard.

  After church, Karin always had questions. She saved them up until we were alone and then fired them off one after another -- why don't you use real wine? why not simply call it communion? how do you know you are forgiven? are there not some things that can never be forgiven? why do you sing so many songs about blood? She was relentless.

  "Hells bells, Karin! Didn't your parents teach you anything about Jesus? Didn't you ever go to Sunday school?" I asked once when I'd had enough.

  "Of course. In Germany, when I was little my grandmother took me to church. I was very young. But it was different . . ."

  "Different?"

  "I mean . . . I do not remember my grandmother very well, or going to such a place. I only know that she took me," she said, so ending the conversation.

  Karin preferred to ask the questions.

  Between all the preaching she heard, and my rudimentary instruction, Karin became a pretty good imitation of a Baptist.

  And then she saw her first baptizing. She was amazed to discover there was a pool under the choir stand. Her eyes widened as she watched the folks in white robes march in and, one by one, step into the pool, speak the words, and let Reverend Harden lay them back under the water. Later, Karin had but one question for me.

  "If their sins are washed away in the water, where do the sins go?"

  I had no answer. I wasn't sure I even understood the question. But that night, and for some time to come, we went round and round about it. I said that sins weren't like tea stains. They don't actually get washed away by the water. I tried to explain it every way I knew how.

  "But the evil from the sins -- the evil must go into the water."

  "I don't know one thing about evil," I said between yawns.

  Karin was still talking when I drifted off to sleep. "It is not fair," she was saying. "It's not right . . ."

  From that day on, Karin became a student of sin the way old Otto Higgins studied his birds -- by watching. She was particularly interested in the difference between folks' Sunday manners and the way they acted the rest of the time. She had a little notebook where she kept track of those she referred to as her "sinners." Occasionally she asked me to spell a name or explain how this one was kin to that one, or tell her everything I knew about someone.

  To be fair, Karin's obsession and her constant scribbling in those notebooks probably kept her mind from moldering. School bored her, though she never missed a day and made straight A's. The other girls thought her snooty, and the boys felt -- and acted -- like morons whenever she was around. Either she didn't notice, or didn't care that she received no invitations to weenie roasts or birthday parties. But I noticed, and it peeved me no end that Mother made me stay home for Karin's sake. Mother and Karin were not good company for each other. They usually passed their time together in silence.

  Late one summer night, I caught her slipping out our bedroom window.

  "I must check on my sinners," she said. "I cannot get a complete understanding unless I observe them at night when they think no one is watching."

  I told her that was rude. And also that she was nuts. She climbed back inside and sat at the foot of my bed. While she explained that she was doing "science," and not aimless snooping, I realized that she had perfected her spying to such a high degree that she could watch and hear the nocturnal doings inside almost any house in town. She knew every bent or missing Venetian blind slat, every torn curtain, and which windows were routinely left open at night.

  I told myself I was only going along to keep her out of trouble. But it was the prospect of adventure -- and danger -- that attracted me. On most of those mosquito ridden nights, we didn't see a thing out of the ordinary and heard only occasional snatches of dull conversations or silly arguments about money, the carpet, the kids, what so-and-so should have said or don
e. None of which was worth getting all bit up over. For me, these outings turned out to be about as fascinating as shelling a mess of peas. So after a while, I quit tagging along.

  There were, however, two "cases" that interested me. The first concerned Reverend Harden's nephew, Calvin, who'd chased after -- and bedded -- most of the young war widows in the vicinity. Even more impressive was that he'd somehow managed to keep these goings-on secret. There wasn't a breath of gossip about him or the widows. Those poor girls didn't even know about each other. Pretty amazing, I thought.

  The second case involved Summer Marshburn -- universally considered "the prettiest, sweetest girl at LaGrange High." It was worth a few bug bites to catch her stealing money from her grandmother's dresser drawer.

  One steamy August afternoon, Karin asked Mother to excuse me from my chores so that we could go hiking. Mother offered to pack us a basket.

  "That is very kind, Mrs. Milgrim," Karin said with customary formality. "But I have already prepared a basket for us."

  We followed the road out of town, and then she turned off onto a cow path that, as far as I knew, led nowhere. "There is something you will want to see," she said as she hurried me along.

  "About Calvin Harden?"

  "No. It's the Mexican pickers."

  I stopped walking. "Mexican pickers? Who cares about what they do!"

  "No, no. You don't understand. Come, we must be swift. The pickers at the Marshburn farm are leav--"

  "So," I said. "Summer Marshburn's stealing money from Mexicans now."

  "Please, we must go quickly."

  We trotted down Rose Dairy Road until we reached Lila's Woods where we wove through the trees like Maypole dancers. Karin knew exactly how to get up to the Marshburn place without being seen, and where to hide when we got there. Not far from a cluster of concrete shacks where Mr. Marshburn housed his migrant help, we hunkered down in the ruins of an ancient log cabin that sat under a dense thicket.